-
Teejan Bai’s best known scenes are the Draupadi cheerharan and the war between Bhishma and Arjun. Her team consists of long-standing faithfuls who have been performing with her for the last three decades.
Getting to meet the iconic Pandavani exponent, Teejan Bai, isn’t as easy as one might expect. “I will be performing in Patna on September 19,” is all she says in Chhattisgarhi Hindi, leaving you hanging with that sliver of information. The subsequent calls on her mobile are answered by a secretary who lets you know of the venue and hour, and no more. Landing in Patna on the scheduled day, we head straight to her modest hotel, having gotten that information from the organisers. A knock at the room is answered by her. “Return later. I am about to have lunch,” she says, and closes the door. The proverbial thrill of an unpredictable assignment: we park ourselves close by for the next two hours and gulp down some caffeine.
The next knock, and she wordlessly lets us in. A plastic dustbin, already half full, on one side of the bed, doubles as a spittoon for her paan while a television beams out the local news. Wearing glasses and no make-up, she prefers to recline comfortably on the bed. Her aura is one of the mysterious, moody artist who smiles when you least expect it. “I have been losing hearing for the last two years. So I have to wear aids. I am 70 now. I was 13 when I started doing Pandavani....” she says.
Teejan Bai made Pandavani, the traditional storytelling form of Chhattisgarh famous all over the world, and received the Padma Shri in 1988, Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1995 and the Padma Bhushan in 2003. This resident of Ganiyari village of Chhattisgarh broke the glass ceiling in her art more than half a century ago. Pandavani is a musical style narration of the tales from the Mahabharata, told from the perspective of the Pandava brothers. Generally, women performers sing in the sitting style known as vedamati, while the men enact it in the kapalik or standing pose. A teenaged Teejan Bai powerfully opted for the enacting and standing pose when she gave her first performance, breaking tradition. Has the form changed in any way over the decades? “I don’t do anything new in Pandavani. I like to keep it as it was. Naya kya aur kyun daloge, jab parampara leke chalna hain [Why will you change or put anything new when you must carry on a tradition]. I have taught more than 200 kids but they all need more lagan [dedication] to the form,” she says.
It is said that theatre actor Habib Tanvir gave Teejan Bai her big break when he invited her to perform for prime minister Indira Gandhi. “Habib Tanvir called me for a programme in Delhi. This was 30-40 years ago.... I am uneducated, can’t recall exactly when.... I spent 13 days there, we were put up at The Ashok hotel. I never met him after that. Later, Indira Gandhi invited me to Teen Murti Bhavan and honoured me. She teased me saying, ‘Aap toh Chhattisgarh mein Mahabharat karti hongi [You must be doing the Mahabharat in Chhattisgarh].’ And, I retorted, ‘Main sunaati hoon [I narrate it].’ She then turned to Habib sahib and said, ‘Who says Teejan Bai is uneducated!’” she says, laughing at the memory.
How does she decide which tale from the epic to perform for a show? “I don’t practise anymore; I perform straight on stage. The choice of tale depends on the audience. If it is older, I choose something quieter. If it is a younger mix of boys and girls, then I enact the action, war scenes.” Teejan Bai’s best known scenes are the Draupadi cheerharan and the war between Bhishma and Arjun. Her team consists of long-standing faithfuls who have been performing with her for the last three decades. “Our tuning with each other is perfect. I don’t need to tell them which tale or act to do,” she says, taking a break to change for the show that evening. Her costume is a tomato red sari, a mix of gold and silver jewellery sourced from Bilaspur, and some make-up. “I have never had a make-up person; I am a simple being. Unlike people from cities, village folk don’t require make-up.”
Over the years, as her popularity grew, Teejan Bai gave performances across the world, the first being in Paris in 1950. It also opened the doors for more women in this folk storytelling such as Ritu Verma. “It is great that more women are doing Pandavani,” she says, reaching out for her main instrument—a German-make wooden tanpura—that doubles as Bhima’s mace or Draupadi’s hair on stage. “I used to perform more earlier. Now with great-grandchildren, it has lessened. I want them to learn the form and take it forward,” she says, stocking up on paan. “Paan is my life! I have been eating it since childhood, making it myself. I like a saada Bangla paan, which has chuna, supari and laung,” she says with that disarming smile.
At Patna’s popular theatre hub, Kalidas Rangalaya, that evening, Teejan Bai was the chief guest at the annual festival. She was introduced as the first woman to perform Pandavani on stage from Chhattisgarh, and then a long list of awards and honours was read out. Teejan Bai sat unfazed through it all. When she finally took the stage, the atmosphere was electric. “Shall I take you all to the Kurukshetra maidan?” she thundered and the auditorium roared back. “Chalo fir [Let’s go],” Teejan Bai said, striding across the double microphones like a warrior.
We learnt later that she had to cut short her performance because of discomfort with the stage arrangements. But in the true-blue form of a powerful artist, Teejan Bai had signed off her hour-long show without missing a beat, exiting the stage amid a din of applause—and no one knew.
OF EPIC PROPORTIONS
More than 3,000 years old, Pandavani is folk storytelling in a musical tradition, based in rural Chhattisgarh. The name itself means telling stories of the five brothers from Mahabharata, but Bhima is the hero in most of them. While women performers like Teejan Bai and Ritu Verma are the notable ones today, among the men there is Punaram Nishad, who is based in Durg and teaches from his residence.
